A Light Among Heart
by Alana Shinra
Summary: Due to the sins of two men, Mikage Kokoro grew up without knowing a family's love and security. At sixteen, cold and jaded, she has the chance to find out for herself what a family is like. And maybe the chance at a different kind of love... HikaruxOC


Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran High School Host Club in any way, or any other anime/manga that might appear in this story. I do own Kokoro, and her family.

Author's Notes: OO This is actually my second time to fan fiction net. My second try for glory xD; Be nice? This will most likely have a strong rating, simply because I'm a fan or drama and angst and all that.

Ouran-One: And In the Beginning...

The high school campus was unusually quiet and abandoned near the back of the gym. Even so, Kokoro shot a quick look over her shoulder before she ducked behind a dumpster filled with foul smelling banana peels and discarded sack lunches. She squeezed between a chain-link fence and the corner of the building. The wire mesh rattled and clanked against the metal posts, and the large sketch book under her arm scraped against the graffiti covered wall. Once through, she followed a path around a pile of old hurdles and broken desks.

On the other side, students crowded a narrow corridor, bundled in small groups of twos and threes, pinching cigarettes. Clothing wise, Kokoro blended right in with her hoddie, low-riding cargo pants, and high-top sneakers. "Hey," she nodded. No one returned her greeting.

A boy bitterly stepped aside and let her pass. Only losers hung out in Smokers' Alley, and the kids glaring at her now were proud to be the school's rock-bottom bad. Kokoro was unwelcome and could see the annoyance on their faces, but she didn't give a damn and stayed anyway. She felt safer among the unpopular. She didn't fit in at Naruo High, and secretly dreaded the day she did. She was a loner and purposely so.

She was nothing to them. She was only a list of differences, a list of adjectives to describe what they see when they looked at her, a collection of words to define themselves as whatever she was not. The world was happier if she never got fixed because trash was better left out by the side of the road. No one minded the smell of or the maggots as long as it stayed out of sight and far away. She tried to stay as far from everyone as possible, She walked near the edges of the hallways. She sat in the back row of every class. She kept hidden behind her long raven hair. She figured if they didn't want her then she didn't want them.

They said they were _concerned_ about her. Everyone has been _concerned _about her her whole life. Her teachers, her guidance counselors, concerned that she didn't reach out and embrace being popular or having lots of friends. Concerned that she didn't want any of the things they wanted her to want. That is what makes her strange and dangerous to them. They were concerned about her silence. They waned her to talk about what was inside her. She wanted to tell them there was nothing wrong with silence.

They didn't really want to know what she felt, not really. They didn't want to hear the truth because it upsets them. They don't want to hear about how her foster mother said Kokoro ruined her life, that it was her fault Ann drank. They didn't want to hear about her asshole foster father. Ed. They didn't really want her to tell them about how he thought she was _pretty for a Jap_. Or how his hand felt like burning liquid as it moved down her spine, how his fist felt like metal when she tried to pull away from him. That would make them uncomfortable. That would damage their view of the world.

They only wanted to know what happened if it happens according to their rules for how things are suppose to be. Anything that crept in to ruin the illusion of nice homes and big cars and shopping malls needed to be kept inside, buried away, lost and better forgotten. But all she saw when she looked around were the bad things that had crept in, the demons that lived near the shadows that she stayed. She learned to lie. She learned to say -fine- to any question about how she felt.

Because nobody cared if she was well, only if she behaved well, only if she was normal. And that is why they were concerned. Because she was not normal. She didn't dress normal. She didn't wear her hair normal. She didn't say normal things like the other kids in the hallways did. And she wished they saw that. She wished they'd stop being so fucking concerned and leave her alone.

"You just do it for attention." She heard them say that, the girls with their matching clothes and matching haircuts and matching faces. "You just want to be different that's all." They think they're so fucking clever and smart, that they've figured out some gimmick she had come up with to make people notice her.

"That's it alright, you caught me." She usually snickered back at them and gave them a big FUCK YOU smile to see them on their way.

One of her counselors asked why she had to be so angry, why couldn't she be more polite and make them understand her. But how did she make them understand that nothing she did was to get attention, that everything she did was the opposite. She learned when she was young not to seek attention, that whenever she did something like that that her foster mother would hate her. "Think your so fucking cute." Ann would say, wiping the smile from Kokoro's face with the long fingernails she would spend every Saturday night painting and filing in front of the television.

She didn't want their attention. She only wanted to disappear, to blend in with the demons so that they wouldn't see her and wouldn't come inside any more to hurt her. She was nothing to them and they were nothing to her.

Mikage Arashi sat in the comfortable leather chair behind his mahogany desk. In his hand he held a single photograph of a teenage girl with flowing black hair and blue eyes as crystal as the Sea of Japan. His Granddaughter. Mikage Kokoro. She would be sixteen. A sweet sixteen, sixteen wasted years of not knowing who her family was or what she meant to them. And he had no one to blame for that but himself.

Arashi's sin was Pride. Pride in his pure-blood Japanese family and their success for many generations. Pride in his two sons that they would do what they were told and marry well bred Japanese girls and settle down to have heirs and take their places in the family empire. Yet Pride blinded him to his ways.

His eldest son, Hiromichi, was brilliant and handsome. Arashi had the highest hopes for him to become the best. Yet Hiromichi had his own mind, not willing to just fall into the path destiny had set for him. Against his father's wishes, he married an American, a flight attendant. Mary Blessing had been a leggy blond, someone Arashi would never pick for his eldest son and heir.

Forbidding Hiromichi from seeing the gold-digger had only made his son more determined. And so Hiromichi and Mary, after defeating every obstacle thrown in their way, ran to America and got married. Kokoro was the result. But only after four years, Hiromichi's life was taken away in a car accident. A car accident when he was driving to work at a factory. A factory! His son!

Arashi had already disowned his son, did not shed a tear when news arrived of his death. He had also ignored Mary's pleads for financial help. He had not known that she had cancer. By the time Arashi had opened his eyes to the truth, Mary was dead, and Kokoro had been thrown into the system at just ten years old. It had taken so long to track his precious Granddaughter down. Plans had been made, and set in motion. Arashi was going to bring his Granddaughter to Tokyo, back to her home, where she would get the love denied to her for so long, the best education. She would want for nothing. But even Arashi knew that would not even begin to make up for his sins.


End file.
